


hold life like a face

by Tohje



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous Relationship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Pre-Slash If You Squint, The Force has the patience of a saint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24401647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tohje/pseuds/Tohje
Summary: This time, when the humming comes, he raises from the low-burning fireside. He checks his sleeping padawan, covers him with his own larger cloak and tucks the hem under the slightly frowning young man. He resists the urge to smooth that frown with his thumb, and leaves the cloth behind him.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 23
Kudos: 116
Collections: Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan May the Fourth be With You Prompt Meme





	hold life like a face

**Author's Note:**

> From this wonderful prompt by  
> ShootMeDead   
> (May the Fourth be With You Prompt Meme):
> 
> Obi-Wan has a habit of humming under his breath. His fav is one from his homeworld about coming home. When Qui-Gon is in coma, coz he’s a dumbass who doesn’t wait for backup before rushing at the karking Sith, it’s the sound of the familiar humming that guides him to his home, which just happens to be Obi-Wan (fluffiest of fluff, gen or ship)
> 
> antheiasilva took a clever look at this, and it's now all better because of them. All remaining oddities are my own.

_\--- Then you hold life like a face_

_between your palms, a plain face,_

_no charming smile, no violet eyes,_

_and you say, yes, I will take you,_

_I will love you, again._

\- Ellen Bass, “The Thing Is”

The space consists mostly of emptiness between particles. Yet, there is the Force. That is just one of the many paradoxes of the Force, that it can exist as nothing.

The exhaustion gnaws at him, hangs upon him, threats to drag him back into oblivion. Surely, with all this teeth-shattering ache, his bones must have been grinded to the space-dust by now. He is to be scattered into nothingness, and the Force will find him there and he will merge. 

Instead

The Force orders: _step out of the nothing, Jedi._ He has followed that will for the most of his life; what is emptiness against that? What is aching? So Qui-Gon steps ahead, even though he is unsure that he still has legs and hands. 

He opens the door. 

***

The bright midday light blinds him. The humid air carrying the heavy smell of mold plasters itself on his face. The Living Force is suddenly bursting with impatient _light-moist-roots-soil-nutrients-growth-growth-growth,_ and he staggers after all the not-wanting, all the not-reaching _._ It takes a moment before he recognizes his surroundings; the doorstep of one of the Order’s test greenhouses. 

_The latest mission must have hit harder than I thought,_ Qui-Gon thinks, shaking his head to get rid of the dancing specks in his vision. He doesn’t remember his reason for being here, not before he sees the approaching taskmaster with a straw boater. 

The Chagrian master clucks after identifying him, and points to the right. There, a path winding behind the rows of massive Chalactan moss-ferns. The uneasiness, momentarily dampened by the singing Living Force, settles again at the bottom of Qui-Gon’s stomach and demands attention.

The boy has been quiet after Phindar. Defiant in his relentless obedience, in his studies and organizing and cleaning Qui-Gon’s cupboards like a coy but determined maiden-ghost. “No, master. I find everything satisfactory. I thank you for this day and your teachings,” he replies every evening, voice and Force-presence eager and honest, eyes placid like delta water every time Qui-Gon has suggested that Obi-Wan would do well to discuss some things with his master. 

And then Qui-Gon would sense him lying awake and motionless in his room until the bleak, grey morning light touches the skyline. If he is not cleaning the kitchen shelves.

He could order his padawan to talk. But would not. Not yet, even though he feels his patience wearing extremely thin. 

There were teachings in his lineage not worth passing forward.

_Sent him to the vegetation, you did instead? Hoping the trees make him spill, hmmm?_

_Well_ , Qui-Gon answers in his thoughts as he brushes the heavy fern leaves aside with two hands and spots Obi-Wan, _at least they can make him make_ **_some_ ** _noise, it seems_.

Obi-Wan is crouching near ground, squinting at the irrigation. Neat, shorts nails are getting dirty as he plants saplings just so that they get the ideal amount of watering in straight, symmetrical lines. He is humming tunelessly; it’s clear that the boy is not especially musically talented.

At the sight of his master, the humming gets cut short. Obi-Wan scrambles up and bows. Qui-Gon waves his hand. They settle back to work without looking at each other. 

The humming returns at the end of the second row. Qui-Gon listens through the third one, feeling the sweat gathering on his forehead and on the tip of his nose. In the beginning of the fourth row, he tries to join in. The boy stops on his haunches and falls silent. 

Qui-Gon keeps moving forward, slowly, not breaking the simple tune. 

Obi-Wan follows after a short while, returning to the tune so quietly that Qui-Gon has to strain his ears to be sure. 

Afterwards, when they are resting in the shadow of the biggest and oldest moss-fern and Obi-Wan has drained his bottle of muja juice, the boy leans half against the tree trunk and, as if by accident, half into Qui-Gon’s side. He closes his eyes in the oppressive heat. 

Qui-Gon sighs into the Force, long and relieving. 

***

_It was good to see him again. I regret that I never told him how close to my heart he got, and how quickly._

_Can I rest now?_

The Force denies him. It’s neither cruel or gentle, but simply an imperative. Maybe a bit mischievous though, because -

***

Qui-Gon wakes up in his room, blanket tangled around his waist. Tropical summer nights on Coruscant are irksome if you sweat through your sheets even in hyperspace. He feels short of breath. He combs his fingers through his matted hair and grimaces; didn’t he take a shower after the mission, before getting to bed? Unusual. Obi-Wan will roll his eyes at him in the morning when he grumbles in the fresher. 

There’s a faint but repetitive knocking coming from the kitchen; his padawan must have left the ventilation window open. Also unusual. Their latest mission must have been truly gruelling. He might as well get up and have some lungfuls of fresh air to ease an odd tightness in his chest before closing the thing. 

A stripe of light greets him from the crack of the threshold. Obi-Wan truly has been sloppy, leaving the kitchen light on. More unusual. As Qui-Gon opens the sliding door, the siren of an emergency hover vehicle starts to wail behind the open vent. 

Obi-Wan, who sits at the table, his back toward the door, starts to hum under his breath and it drowns out the harrowing noise.

His padawan’s voice has deepened - a surprisingly long time ago, now that Qui-Gon racks his brain and tries to remember. His tenor has turned melodic, if still slightly off-key, the tune thoroughly familiar to Qui-Gon by now. He can almost catch some words among his padawan’s murmur; older, more guttural dialect, vernacular. The song originated from Stewjon, Obi-Wan had once said, but hadn’t elaborated where he had learned it. 

His padawan uses the tune for many things, but this time it’s to help him concentrate, Qui-Gon gathers as he takes a closer look. There are rags and screwdrivers and smaller, more delicate instruments scattered on the table. The smell of the polishing wax hangs heavy in the warm night air despite the cracked-open vent. 

Qui-Gon can’t see Obi-Wan’s saber, currently dismantled and hidden behind his back (a back so suddenly broadened; his padawan would soon have to let his senile master on by the elbow if changes kept whoosing over Qui-Gon’s head at this rate). When he feels the Force, he can sense Obi-Wan’s crystals singing in sync with his padawan’s low hum, contented. 

Some months ago, even some cycles ago, Obi-Wan would have asked Qui-Gon to supervise the dismantling. His padawan doesn’t need that anymore. His movements are calm and sure, his back relaxed, a slight smile lurks on his voice. Qui-Gon leans against the doorframe. 

Obi-Wan turns, and Qui-Gon catches a glimpse of the same smile which the humming has already betrayed. There's a smudge of wax on Obi-Wan's chin where he has rubbed it in thought. “Thought you might wake up, master.”

“How so?”

Obi-Wan shrugs a little. “You don’t sleep well on hot nights like these.”

“I’m a man of my bad habits, and you are accommodating, is what you are saying. The thing is, padawan, I’m learning that you are becoming the man of change.”

Obi-Wan frowns at him; an endearingly adolescent expression on a young man's face. “Maybe you are more asleep than I thought, master. You are spouting nonsense. I still have much to learn. There’s iced matcha on the counter.”

Qui-Gon touches Obi-Wan's shoulder on his way. He doesn't know why. The young man doesn't need reassurance or comfort or physical strength. He concentrates on the task ahead of him, but his night time Force presence greets the touch with something soft and quite rare.

Qui-Gon fills his mug, rubbing his chest absent-mindedly. The most unusual thing about his padawan: he brings out things and reactions from places inside Qui-Gon that he couldn't otherwise reach. The humming returns. The wailing of the sirens behind the Temple walls fades into the distance.

***

_I regret that he had to look after me so much. It should have been my responsibility so many times, not the other way round._

_Did I do him a disservice, letting him so close?_

_He is worrying himself sick now, and berating himself because he holds on, isn't he?_

The Force tugs at him, much like a wind fills the sails; not with gentleness, not with malice, but with purpose in itself, in the act.

***

Qui-Gon hears the humming the first thing as he is fumbling at their quarters' threshold, cursing faintly. There is something wrong with the door’s automatic; nowadays it may whoosh open smoothly as anything, or it may get stuck with useless beeping getting increasingly more shrill. Qui-Gon has been so busy (frustrated, wanting to escape) in the Senate rotation that he doesn’t remember the blasted door before he returns every night, and Obi-Wan… well, it’s usually Obi-Wan who takes care of these things, because they catch his eye long before Qui-Gon's.

"Learn to see the beauty and stories of the worn and tatty," he would often lecture his padawan, but now he is ready to assail the noisy door with a saber in hand. It sounds like a karking medical ward alarm. 

But now there’s humming, after two months of returning to the silent apartment in the small hours of the day after lots and lots of bureautic ineffectiveness. Humming, and a cloud of warm, damp air leaking from the fresher. 

Qui-Gon listens carefully.

It’s a tradition for humanoid padawans to carry out their first solo mission sometimes after their twentyfirst life day. It’s also traditional that the Council oversees the mission. The master gets the evaluation and mission report alongside the padawan only afterwards. 

Obi-Wan comes out from the fresher, rubbing his shoulders with one towel and the other one wrapped around his hips. There’s a small and tidily stitched wound near his collarbone. His padawan cut is out of shape, sticking in all directions and looking ridiculous, and he smiles with all his dimples and doesn’t stop humming as his face disappeares behind the towel for a short moment. And Qui-Gon stands, transfixed: it must be how tooka feels after a long and harsh winter when it finds the first patch of spring sun and rolls in it, this warmth spreading in his chest. 

“Good to be home, master. Let me grab some clean clothes so that I won’t shed all the dried mud of Lavastine on the Council’s floor. I hope they will be satisfied. I brought some local pottery with me, I think you will find-” Obi-Wan vanishes into his room, the Force behind him rippling with _light_ and _home_ and _youth_ and _hoping to make you proud._ And Qui-Gon. He stands there, oddly helpless, not knowing what to do with his hands, too bulky and heavy since his initiate days when he had to be careful not to hurt his agemates. 

All masters know that the life day mission is more for master than for padawan.

Obi-Wan is back, safe and successful. This time. But Qui-Gon now knows he himself didn’t come out this trial unscathed; there is already so much more sunlight in the apartment, in his evening, in his chest, in his life. He has to let go of that soon: he knows that the young man under his tutelage is terrifyingly capable, humble and brimming with possibilities and vitaliness of Light. In no circumstances he is to hold that back, to hold something like that for himself. 

Someday Obi-Wan won’t return so full of light and prize. He won’t return to Qui-Gon, to their quarters.

He folds his hands into his sleeves, tightly. 

Traditionally, padawan gets a small, modest celebration with their master and friends after the life day mission. Qui-Gon will be there, raising his glass and listening to more informal re-telling of Obi-Wan’s mission, enjoying his padawan’s dry wit and astute observations. Maybe he raises his brow and challenges Obi-Wan over some detail, sparring with him verbally like they will be soon sparring in the salles again.

And after he will kneel on the meditation pillow in the middle of the night. It will be long hours. He will try to figure out how in the Code’s name to accept all that transient, for the young soon-to-be-knight’s sake as much as his own.

***

_I still held on as hard. More so, if I’m being honest. He has always been the better man._

The Force doesn’t deny or agree. It just breaths with him, through pain. Maybe that it’s not abandoning him is a sign enough. 

It wouldn’t be a chore at all, to scatter into the galaxy and let the Force find him and to converge. To be one with the Light, after a lifetime of always turning his face towards it. It would be a blessing and joy, he knows. 

But now he also knows it wouldn't be a home.

The Force current rises like a tide, like it has just laid low, waiting for some things to penetrate his thick skull. 

_This will hurt like being sat on by a Hutt, coming back all this way,_ Qui-Gon thinks drily, but raises his arms nonetheless and _pushes_. 

***

There is soot and mud all over Obi-Wan’s face, Qui-Gon observes as he raises his gaze from the dancing flames. Once, the untidiness might have bothered his padawan. In the present, Obi-Wan just slumps down next to the fire, exhaustion making him uncharacteristically inelegant.

“Hungry?” Qui-Gon offers a half of his ration bar portion.

“Yes”, Obi-Wan says, and then looks around, “and no.”

“We are no use to them if we collapse”, Qui-Gon reminds him, quite unnecessarily as he very well realizes.

Obi-Wan makes a resigned gesture, and starts to munch without enthusiasm. “It’s all their losses. It’s...pervasive. Even with my mediocre grasp of the Living Force, it’s…” The rest of his words fade when a high-pitched wail raises from the fireside to their left: the ill tidings from the ruins have reached yet another family. Qui-Gon closes his eyes briefly, and wishes for the peaceful transition into the Force. Maybe the soul wasn’t alone. Maybe there was some consolation. Maybe it happened fast. 

“I don’t know how you stand it, master”, Obi-Wan says, a concern evident in his voice. 

“‘We are for the Galaxy, but we are not to take part’”, Qui-Gon quotes at him. “The Force's will must be our guide, but sometimes, tenets are the only way not to get drowned in sorrow.” 

He can’t open himself here, not when there is an overwhelming need to take this horrible grief away from these people. They deserve none of this, like common, decent folks of the Galaxy never do. These crying, confused babies, these dust-covered faces, these rescue teams digging out ruins without breaks, competing against the most merciless goddess of the known universe: time. 

It would be in vain. An useless, prideful sacrifice. He would only get stretched too thin and too weak; he would never be able to contain it all, not even close. 

“I couldn’t sing”, Obi-Wan confesses abruptly. Qui-Gon knows he has been silent and staring at their small fire too long, receded too far into his own mind. Or perhaps it just is that Obi-Wan knows him intimately. Knows this need intimately.

“We were trying to calm down the kids, in one of those big medical tents near to the river. And that only song I know is about coming back home on the first day of spring, and everything is exactly the same as it was before you left, and there are forget-me-nots in your truelove’s hair.” At that point, Obi-Wan closes his mouth with a snap and goes back to munching. For a while, the flames trick Qui-Gon’s eyes and a thirteen-year-old peeks from his twenty three-year-old padawan’s eyes, embarrassed that he couldn't do more. Always ready to offer up any pieces of himself he thought useful to others. 

“They have lost their homes,” Obi-Wan adds after a long while, his voice barely carrying over the cracks of burning logs. 

“Next night you can sing to them to remind them of forget-me-nots,” Qui-Gon says, letting himself be pulled back by his responsibility to teach. If there is also a need to soothe, to comfort this one particular soul in the midst of all, well, that's between him and the Force.

Obi-Wan shrugs. “Such tiny things, compared to all this.”

“Yet persistent in their growth every single spring.”

They finish their sub-par meal in poignant silence. 

“Are you thinking about Stewjon when you sing that song?” Qui-Gon asks, genuinely curious. "Things change very slowly on Stewjon. There are worse things than to come back to that. We like to think our origin keeps on existing out there, even if it's not truly ours.”

If Obi-Wan hadn’t been sleep-deprived and affected by the grief of thousands, Qui-Gon knows he wouldn’t have gotten the answer he got.

“No. My home is not a place,” Obi-Wan says. His eyes are blood-shot and steadfast. “For now, I go where my home goes. I’m very lucky that way.”

He should say that Jedi’s home is all that the Force binds together. That Jedi’s final and only destination is the Force, and so, in a way, every Jedi is already in place everywhere they go. That this unattachment makes them for the Galaxy, and still not a part.

“Lucky indeed”, he whispers instead, against all tenets. _Always the braver man._

***

This time, when the humming comes, he raises from the low-burning fireside. He checks his sleeping padawan, covers him with his own larger cloak and tucks the hem under the slightly frowning young man. He resists the urge to smooth that frown with his thumb, and leaves the cloth behind him.

He walks for a long time from the diminishing campfire, _pushing_ his way forward until he can barely lift his arms anymore and his back is drenched with sweat. The barrier is so thick and so impermeable for a very good reason.

***

Qui-Gon wakes to the special kind of silence. It's the brand of silence every Jedi recognizes: the quietness of someone, or someones, meditating nearby. It vibrates through the Force like they would have hit the melodic Temple bell, only that there is no sound and you can feel changes of pressure on your skin. 

It seems he has skin again around him, reacting and receiving, when recently he...didn't? 

The vibrations are disrupted and disperse; a young voice, frustrated and high and fast. Then familiar, measured cadences and soft t's and crisp r's; Qui-Gon cannot make out the individual words but he knows the rhythm by heart. Somebody is guiding somebody else through a moving meditation. 

So he has ears again too, telling and interpreting, when recently it didn't...matter? 

He is so very tired. And his padawan is somewhere near, so he lets his eyes fall shut. 

***

Next time, Qui-Gon wakes up to the wild abundance of green. A huge bouquet in a vase takes up all his field of vision. It is clearly a handiwork of someone who has only recently become aware that such things exist in the Galaxy, and is especially enamored of **all** the things green and growing: weeds and grasses, mossy twigs and even some reeds. Only when he manages to focus his eyes after a lot of struggling, he notices a few delicate, pale blue flowers sprinkled among the verdant outbreak. 

He must also have eyes again (what an odd thought), even though he didn't remember shifting and adjusting his gaze and naming the things that swim into his vision is such a hassle.

His palate returns too in a rush, and the overflowing, cloying flavor of bacta is its own damning evidence. The sensation registers like klaxon-warning in his mind. 

All these greens and hints of blue are a diversion, he suddenly realizes. There should be black and red, red more than anything, and a desperate bluff and a pure flame through his chest, him breathing in fire instead of oxygen, and his padawan's voice breaking into an anguished scream. 

Why does he remember his padawan's voice calm and balancing then? Is his mind trying to protect him from something? Or is this all some trick of the Dark?

Where the hells is his padawan? 

"Whoa, whoa master. Easy there now. Don't strain the wound." 

His eyes aren't worth a damn credit. A flurry of brown and beige emerges into his vision. Smaller but strong hands grip him by his shoulders and force him back to the pillows. Qui-Gon struggles. He can't give up. He has this choking, unforgivable feeling that he let himself lay down, and didn't ever get up and fight alongside Obi-Wan.

His padawan. Alone. No matter how he tried to steer the Dark away from him. 

Too many deceiving, bright colors blur into a frantic yet determined action. 

"Master! Qui-Gon! It's over, the battle is over! You are causing damage to your lung, you stubborn barv--- oh kark, you can't see me at all, can you? Listen! Listen to me! Center around my voice, do you understand! The moment in here and now!" 

The humming begins a bit breathless. Half-muttered, hurried words about crossing the stream on the fine spring day, and the gentle southwester in your hair, pushing your steps toward home, where somebody waits for you.

Qui-Gon knows this song. He loves this song. 

"That's it, that's better. Listen. Use my voice as a focalising point. You have done this many times with me flustering, have you not, master? Words as meditation beads, like you taught me." 

The humming slows down and loses some of its urgency. Over that rolling hill and following that narrow path through the woodland. Your feet know the way, and you want to run and savour this moment at the same time, because someone is waiting. You should bring forget-me-nots for them to wear in their hair. 

"Obi-Wan?"

His voice is raspy and weak, all things contrast to the simple, gentle song. 

Qui-Gon raises his hand, and _pushes_ (one last time), like reaching through gelatinized bacta. His palm meets a cheek; a fuzzy stubble and a dimple, appearing and disappearing. Features he can sketch with his fingers even half-blind: plain, clear, beautiful face. 

Hummed words blend together and quiet down into a murmur.

"Hello there, master." 

His eyelids weigh a grown bantha each, and his gaze still mulishly refuses to adjust. Obi-Wan is a brown-beige blob.

"I...I think I have to sleep soon. I promise to remember how lucky I am, the next time I wake up." 

The dimple reappears under his palm. 

"That's all right, master. Remember how it took me five attempts after Jenevra? Just don't beat that. Anakin will be disappointed that he wasn't here for the first time." 

"Would you... sing some more. Before I fall asleep. It would be a great solace." 

He can feel Obi-Wan swallowing, once. If his padawan's voice catches a bit, if it's a bit thinner than usual, Qui-Gon doesn't mention it. 

He intends to hold on.


End file.
